And the next day, no one died. “Thus begins José Saramago Las intermitencias de la muerte, a novel in which on January 1, it is not clear what year humans stopped dying, posing a problem of tremendous magnitude for society and a demographic challenge difficult to imagine.

Well, that moment that Saramago glimpsed one day already has a date: “In 2045, man will be immortal”. This is what José Luis Cordeiro, professor and advisor of the Singularity University, an American academic institution created in 2009 by NASA and financed by Google, which has participated in the meeting ‘Artificial intelligence and future of the human species’ of the International University. Menéndez Pelayo (UIMP) of Santander. Neither AIDS, nor cancer, nor hunger. Nothing. In just over 30 years, no disease can kill the human species because, as he says, “aging is a curable disease.”

“In 2029 we will have artifacts the size of a computer capable of exceeding the intelligence level of the human being.”
To make such statements, Cordeiro is based on a current increasingly widespread and which was already echoed Time magazine: the so-called “technological uniqueness.” This point towards technological progress and the arrival of artificial intelligence as the tools that will end the ‘human age’ and will give rise to the ‘posthuman age’. A hitherto unimaginable milestone in a world in which the digital divide and social inequalities are still evident in the different countries that populate the planet and in which there is still unequal access to health or technology.

Cordeiro comes to confirm what Ray Kurzweil had already said, who predicted on several occasions that at a moment in the history of mankind the machines will come to consciousness. According to Google’s engineering director and founder of Singularity University, in 2029 we will have artifacts the size of a computer, capable of surpassing the intelligence level of a human being; and in 2045, some kind of software will be able to take on the combined intelligence of all men and the complexity of thought processes. At that time, software could go beyond the sophistication of the human brain and cause “the death of death.”

“Between 2029 and 2045, we will have computers with more transistors than neurons have our brain, and that will be the beginning of the technological singularity, when artificial intelligence reaches human intelligence”, says Professor Cordeiro. .

Cordeiro says that computers will have more … Cordeiro says that computers will have more transistors than neurons in the human brain. EM
But this Venezuelan researcher goes even further. It foresees that, in the next 10 years, for 10 dollars any man could get to access the sequencing of his genome, to know what relation diseases such as cancer or Alzheimer’s have with their genes and get to prevent them. This, he warrants, would allow humans in the near future to “design” our descendants to our liking and avoid depending on which disorders.

50 years ago, British friction science writer Arthur C. Clarke formulated three laws related to scientific advancement. The first one said that if a scientist says that something is possible, he is probably right; But if he says it’s impossible, he’s probably wrong. The second insisted that the only way to discover the limits of what was possible was to approach the impossible. And the third, that all sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. It was science fiction, but in them the technological singularity is supported to venture to realize similar future forecasts of a dystopian reality.

“30 years ago there were no personal computers, 20 years ago the first mobile phones started to appear, 10 years ago Google was a small start-up and today it is one of the richest companies in the world and it pays my salary. in the next 10, 20, 30 years? Magical things, “says this researcher.

“In the next few years, humans will merge with robots.”
The truth of his claims, he insists, lies in the advances of science and technology. In the achievements of the Methuselah Foundation, an institution that has managed to extend the healthy life of mice up to five years in the last decade, “the equivalent of 1,000 human years”; or in the demonstration that cells like germinal, carcinogenic or bacteria “do not age”. This would show that “life was born to live and not to die”.

Be that as it may, what is evident is that technology changes exponentially and the progress of intelligence and knowledge is apparently unstoppable. Where are the limits? Or, rather, are there such limits? Apparently not.

“The brain is the most complex structure in the universe and, in addition, the only organ that has not yet been artificially created, but scientists are beginning to study the brain systematically and we are going to have an explosion of artificial intelligence” explains the professor at Singularity University. The ‘Brain Initiative’, an American research project to try to map all brain activity, the last great frontier of science; or the ‘Human Brain Project’, an international program that tries to provide researchers with a tool that helps to understand the human brain, in addition to computer simulation, make this researcher foresee that “in the coming years, humans will be merged with the robots”. These, as in ‘The Bicentennial Man’, will even have feelings.

“In the next 30 years we will cure all diseases and you are part of the first human immortal generation.”
In 2007, the governments of Korea and Japan already showed their concern for a future full of robots and they undertook different measures in order to try to regulate their behavior. In fact, the title of this legislative initiative was ‘Draft guide to ensure the healthy behavior of the next generation of robots’. Both countries considered the laws already formulated by Isaac Asimov insufficient: a robot can not harm a human being or, due to inactivity, allow a human being to suffer damage; a robot must obey the orders of human beings, except if these orders conflict with the First Law; A robot must protect its own existence to the extent that this protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

It could be said that all the above is pure speculation. Maybe a tremendous nonsense. But José Luis Cordeiro and Singularity University, one of the most prestigious and specialized institutions in research and training on new technologies and their application in the most strategic and decisive sectors on the economic growth and social welfare of the population, believe that do not.

“In the next 30 years we will cure all diseases and you are part of the first immortal human generation,” he insists. And, as the English philosopher and illustrator William Blake said, “everything we see today was a day of imagination, everything we imagine today can be reality tomorrow.” Or as Mafalda said, “the future is not what it was before.”